In Transit

Traveling can become a way of life, depending on your line of work. I don't intend for that to happen in my case--nor do I think Katie (to say nothing of Eva!) would allow it to--but loitering in airline terminals, and the ritual of takeoff and landing become an easy habit before long, like adapting to a one-hour drive to and from work. Not something ideally in your life plan, not something you brag about, but still, something you can get used to.

Of course, the ability to go online in most places nowadays makes it a bit easier to be a road warrior.

But I'm not really a road warrior. I'm coming home from all of my second trip to the Gulf (having more or less traded places with my sister- and mother-in-law, along with the SIL Cori's kids, who headed to Pensacola a day ago) this year. It's likely I'll be headed down at least once more, though nothing is ever definite with marine work, except that the ocean will be there, and there will be hurricanes. All the other stuff about ships is dependent on circumstances.

It's a measure of my impatience with travel that two trips feels like 20. It's a measure of my homebodiness that three weeks away feels like three months. Yes, I love to see other parts of the world, I love to experience things that don't happen at home, and I'm a sucker for variety. But the rest of the world, the new experiences, the variety in the end reinforce what I love and need in home. Though the topmost branches of an oak tree might wave in breezes which don't touch ground, still its roots never move and draw the water there that the whole tree needs.

The analogy breaks down, of course, as all analogies do. My whole self, so to speak, is waving in the breeze when I go somewhere else, and then my whole self plunges back into the earth and drinks up the water when I return home. It's not the simultaneous thing that a tree experiences, but at least part of the idea is the same. (And that's the point of an analogy.)

My water comes in two forms, one just cutting her teeth right now, and the other easing her through babyhood into toddlerdom.

As close as I was to my mother--and I was an abject mama's boy until at least age 16 or so (my sister Lisa would argue until I was 35 or so, but she didn't know me as well as she thinks she did--insert smiley face here)--anyhow, I was pretty close to her through adolescence, and after drifting for a few years, we became very close again after Dad died.

How could we not, really? The whole family drew together. Even Lisa and I made a serious effort to get to know each other. (Took a while, but we get along now. Really.)

What I've regretted most, at least consciously, in Dad dying when he did--so young--was missing the chance to have him as a friend. I've had some very good friends--and do now--but who better than my own father? Who could resemble me more, or I him? When I was growing up, a shy, bookish kid with theatrical leanings, Dad must've wondered at least once or twice if we had anything in common. (I'll refrain from the old is-he-really-mine joke. I certainly don't have his ears or his height, so maybe he did wonder.) Anyhow, Dad was the giant, gregarious athlete of the sort I was very jealous of as a kid. I wondered too if we'd ever have gotten along if I'd known him as a young man.

But since 1996, when he died of brain cancer, I've continued growing (fortunately!). Now especially, with a family of my own, life has assumed new dimensions and I need to grow to fill them. I've got a pretty good partner in Kate, so it's not like I'm on my own here, but still, the reality of two people, one an adult and one almost utterly helpless, depending on me is like swimming in the ocean, versus standing in the shallow end of a pool.

It'd be good to talk shop and share few laughs--wistful, self-effacing or otherwise--with someone who's been in the same spot of water, know what I mean?

And not just concerning the basics--taking care of my family emotionally and physically--but for the things internal to me too, my own hopes, my own sometimes outlandish plans. Dad was a businessman, a charming and reasonably accomplished politician and a guy whose ethical standards I admire. (The way his friends spoke about him, and stood by our family, even years after his death is all the proof I'll ever need, even though I rarely saw him at work.)

Well...slightly wistful thoughts, I guess, as I wait for my flight to pull up to the gate here at JFK in NYC. In two hours I'll be with the felines, one big, one small (and a third that's genuinely feline), and all the important things in my life will be right again.

And they'll be made even better shortly thereafter by pizza...